Monday, July 30, 2012

When the injury clouds rain on Yankeeland, they pour. Mark Teixiera left tonight's game against the Orioles in the 7th inning after injuring his left wrist diving for a ball off the bat of J.J. Hardy. He was shaking his hand and flexing his wrist on the field right after the play and was replaced on the field in the next inning.

Multiple Yankee beat guys are reporting that Teix is scheduled to go for tests on the injured wrist tomorrow, and Joe Girardi called the injury a "big concern." There are some reports that he got an X-ray after leaving the game, but that hasn't been confirmed and results are unknown. Needless to say this is not good news if you're a Yankee fan. More details on this story as they become available.

** UPDATE- 9:33PM- Joe confirmed that Teix is scheduled for an MRI tomorrow and said "we'll keep our fingers crossed." That statement paired with the "big concern" line pretty much tells the story of where this is going. Not good at all. **

** UPDATE- 9:53PM- Teix said he actually hurt the wrist on a swing in last night's game but tried to play through it tonight and aggravated it on the dive in the 7th. **

** UPDATE- 10:08PM- Via Marc Carig, X-rays on Teix's wrist came back negative, so at least that's a little bit of good news. **

No matter what order you'd rank them personally, there's little doubt that Gary Sanchez and Mason Williams are the 2 best Yankee position prospects right now (and yes, the order in which I just mentioned them is how I would rank them). With the way the top-tier pitching prospects have faltered this season, it's not much of a stretch to say that Sanchez and Williams are the best Yankee organizational prospects period. When you're blessed with the natural physical gifts and core baseball tools in the way that these guys are, you're going to rise up the prospect board pretty quickly and that's exactly what Sanchez and Williams have done in the early part of their careers.

Their individual successes in 2012 earned them each a promotion to High-A Tampa recently, and last Friday Kiley McDaniel of ESPN posted a scouting assessment of the Tampa Yankees, including a very detailed scouting report on Sanchez and Williams based on what he'd seen since their call-ups. It's an Insider-only piece, and the details of McDaniel's report paint a very positive picture of where both players are right now in their development. The report also points out the weaknesses in Williams' and Sanchez's respective games, weaknesses that are starting to be exposed more now that they're facing a better level of competition, and sets the stage for the next step in their prospect evolution and future scouting evaluations as they finally get to a level where natural tools aren't enough to get by.

There was a bit of breaking news prior to last night's game involving Andy Pettitte and his rehab from his broken ankle. There were reports that he had pushed himself too hard while working out in Seattle (which I still say is completely stupid) and was going to have to back off for an undetermined amount of time. Seeing as how he was already scheduled for a return sometime in September, that undetermined amount of time could put his return at all this season into jeopardy.

Quick to quell the rumor mill before it could get started too much, Cash, via Ken Davidoff, said that Andy did NOT suffer a setback but rather experienced the "ebb and flow of rehab." I don't know about you, but that sounds like the definition of a setback to me.

So that raises the all-important question. Is what happened to Andy, whatever it was, a setback or not? Is it a setback... or isn't it? That's the question.

It was a frustrating game last night. The Yankees got great starting pitching from Hiroki Kuroda but couldn't do much against an inconsistent Felix Doubront. They were able to muster up a little late-game offense to tie it up and force extra innings, but that ended up being nothing more than a moral victory after they lost the lead and the game in the 10th. If you're interested in my thoughts on the game as it unfolded, check out last night's live blog.

Game Notes:

- Need proof that Kuroda got jobbed last night? Of the 24 outs he recorded, 15 of them were on the ground and only 2 left the infield. 2 of the 7 hits he allowed were groundballs that found holes, and 1 was a line drive right at Derek Jeter that Jeter probably should have caught.

- Kuroda was very good last night. He once again had his slider working to perfection to right-handers, and although he couldn't get the downward break on his splitter that he had the previous 2 starts, he made up for it by having a solid sinker and a lively 4-seamer.

- Doubront had really good stuff last night, and he should get credit for that. 15 swinging strikes out of 64 (23.44%) is nothing to sneeze at. But he also battled inconsistency with his fastball, and left more than a few hittable pitches over the plate. The Yankee offense just didn't do much with them.

- The 1-4 hitters for the Yanks last night (Jeter, C-Grand, Teix, Cano) were a combined 1-19 with 1 BB, 6 K, and 6 LOB. That's just not going to get it done against any pitcher, whether he's commanding his stuff or not.

- Of course Russell Martin showed up on a night where nobody else did. As I told my buddy Gary last night via text, Martin has one of these games every 12-15, so we probably shouldn't expect to hear much from him offensively until about the second week of August.